Public Knowledge claims AT&T data practices are fraudulent

Public Knowledge, a public interest group, is calling out AT&T for fraudulent data practices. These practices are clearly exposed in a new service possibly launching soon that would allow developers to pay AT&T for data used by their apps. Apps that integrate this feature would not count toward a user’s data cap.

Just when you thought all possible hope was lost for the carriers.

“This new plan is unfortunate because it shows how fraudulent the AT&T data cap is, and calls into question the whole rationale of the data caps,” said legal director of Public Knowledge, Harold Feld. “Apparently it has nothing to do with network management. It’s a tool to get more revenue from developers and customers.”

Public Knowledge tried getting in touch numerous times with the Federal Communications Commission but had no luck. “We are disappointed that the FCC has ignored the two requests we have made for the agency to investigate the need for both wireless and landline broadband caps,” Feld stated. “There is still no rationale for why they are needed, what the network costs are, how they are imposed and how many customers are subject to them.”

AT&T previously said that data caps were necessary to help ease congestion on wireless spectrum and ultimately make the network faster for its customers. The carrier recently began throttling the top five percent of its remaining unlimited data users presumably for the same reason. However, with certain apps no longer counting toward a data cap if developers pay AT&T, that explanation seems nonsensical.